


Don’t You Step on My Blue Suede Shoes

by De_Nugis



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-03-12
Updated: 2011-03-12
Packaged: 2017-10-17 01:44:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,574
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/171624
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/De_Nugis/pseuds/De_Nugis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>a hunt, a shoe museum, and a head injury.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Don’t You Step on My Blue Suede Shoes

**Author's Note:**

> The Bata Shoe Museum is in Toronto, but I doubt Dean and Sam would forge passports or get thrown into an alternate universe to do a hunt there, so I’m relocating it by artistic license to the US city of your choice. Also, their security is probably actually pretty tight.

When Candi-with-an-i that’s-her-real-name-my-ass-De Winter stomped the stiletto heel of her six hundred dollar shoe through her rival’s skull back in 1993, she probably wasn’t thinking of the inconvenience her gruesome murder method was going to cause Dean Winchester twenty years down the line.

“A shoe museum?” he says. “Seriously, Sam, who builds a museum for shoes?”

Between his giagantor self, the laptop, and an avalanche-prone pile of, yes, shoe books, Sam’s got a whole table to himself in the library. But Dean’s indignation is powerful enough to carry across the room, even though he’s whispering conscientiously. An austere elderly woman who’s been researching something that’s obviously classier and more important than ghost shoes gets up, rustling her papers ostentatiously, and stalks out. Sam doesn’t seem to notice.

“It started with a private donation,” he says. “The guy was some big shoe magnate, and I guess he took his work home with him. But the museum has been adding to his collection since. They acquired the De Winter murder shoe just a couple of months ago. Right around when our model murders started. Think about it, Dean. Blood, hair, brain matter – that’s plenty to hold a spirit.”

“But that wouldn’t be Candi’s, it would be Mary Shore’s,” Dean protests, “Also, gross.”

“Maybe it’s not Candi’s ghost, taking out America’s top models,” Sam says, “Maybe this time it’s the victim repeating the crime.”

“If we’re thinking that, we should be burning Mary Shore’s bones,” Dean says. He can tell it’s a lost cause, though. Sam has his heart set on going to a fucking shoe museum. He just hopes this is Sam’s old museum fetish acting up, not a brand new foot fetish.

“She was cremated, too,” says Sam. Dean’s not imagining the satisfaction in his voice. “The shoe is the best lead we’ve got. I say we pay the museum a visit. It closes at 5, if we hide away somewhere and get ourselves locked in we can break into their storage room and burn the shoe.”

“They go to all the trouble of buying the disgusting murder shoe, then put it in storage?” asks Dean. “Shouldn’t it be part of some Murder on the Fashion Express exhibit?”

“They get a lot of school groups there. I guess they don’t want them focusing on the sensational gore instead of the educational stuff.”

“Educational? Shoes is what they’re teaching them these days? I’m pretty sure Ben’s school was still doing science and English and gym and stuff. Not fashion footwear.”

Sam’s expression goes earnest. “Clothing, fashion, they can be very significant artifacts, Dean. Kids could learn a lot from them, history, culture, technology . . . What?”

Yeah, so maybe Dean’s smiling a bit. He still catches himself doing this, sometimes, even though it’s been more than a year since Sam got his soul back. Angling the conversation on purpose so Sam will say Sam things. He’s not about to let Sam catch him at it, though.

“Have it your own way, Samantha,” he says instead. “I’ll take you on your _educational_ field trip to the shoe museum. Afterwards I might even let you hang out at the mall with your friends. You can talk about boys and go shopping.”

Sam sulks all the way from the library to the shoe museum.

The shoe museum is a lot bigger than you would expect a shoe museum to be. They have a special exhibit on space boots. Dean wouldn’t mind taking a quick look at that, since they’re there. And the floor devoted to indigenous peoples is probably full of myths and folklore and stuff that would totally be research. Dean argues that they should take advantage of the opportunity, kill two birds with one stone, it’s still forty-five minutes to closing. It’s not that Dean actually wants to see the shoes, of course, that’s Sam’s thing, but there’s no point in wasting their legally paid admission.

But Sam the fun-loving shoe fetishist has been replaced by Sam the obsessive case-seeking missile, and he drags Dean away from the exhibits to find a place to lie low till the museum closes and they can see about breaking into the storage room. They end up in a broom closet. It’s stuffy and cramped and dark and contains nothing that relates to astronauts. By the time they sneak out and Sam picks the lock to storage – luckily this place is not exactly the Met when it comes to security – Dean just wants to get the whole thing over with, set fire to the damn shoe and catch an early night.

It’s not that easy. Apparently in addition to their unhealthy obsession with footgear the museum’s staff has the world’s most arcane filing system. The shoes are in boxes. The boxes are in drawers. The drawers are locked. And the labels are along the lines of “L112 – L147” rather than “here be gross ghost shoes.” By the time they’ve been there two hours and picked about a hundred locks and opened maybe a thousand glorified shoe boxes – OK, so Dean’s exaggerating slightly – Dean is ready to scream with boredom, not to mention strangle Sam for getting all pissy when he tried on the pope shoe.

“The pope is an important religious figure to millions of people,” Sam had said primly, “It’s disrespectful,” by which he meant he wanted Dean slaving away in proper OCD Sam fashion, even though it’s becoming pretty clear that Mary Shore or Candi-with-an-i or whoever doesn’t give a crap that they’re after the shoe, it’s going to be a wild goose chase. “Aw, come on Sammy, I’d make an awesome pope,” Dean had retorted, and Sam clearly couldn’t refute that, because he’d just made an ugly, mocking, snorty noise and torn the lid on the box of some basketball god’s sneakers.

“Dean?” Sam says now, and Dean says “Yeah,” because he’s got a forgiving temperament and, anyway, he totally won the pope argument, he can afford to be magnanimous. “What was the murder shoe made of, was it just regular leather?” Sam asks.

“Synthetic lizard skin and rhinestones,” says Dean, and Sam looks at him like he’s being sarcastic or making it up or something, so he adds, “Really,” and he can’t believe Sam put him in a situation where he knows something like that.

“Huh,” says Sam. “I think I’ve got it. These things are stored by material. We need to stop going through all this leather and cloth stuff and find the inorganics and synthetics.”

“ _Now_ you figure that out?” says Dean, but they pick a couple more locks and Sam starts finding Sixties monstrosities in translucent colored plastic and Dean finds a pair of deep-sea diving boots – awesome – and then Sam says, “Fake alligator here. We’re getting warmer.”

“Good,” says Dean absently. He’s trying out the deep-sea diving boots. They’ve got, like, lead in them. Almost as good as moon boots.

“Hey, Sam, look at these,” he says, taking one ponderous step.

Sam turns to give him a classic bitchface – yeah, Dean’s still collecting those, too – but his eyes widen instead of rolling, and he calls “Dean, look out!” just as something hooks around Dean’s ankle and pulls him backward. He’s not exactly up to nimble footwork in his diving boots, and he crashes backwards, sees actual honest to God stars when his head connects with the concrete floor. There’s a sound that’s either Sam firing a gun or Dean’s brain exploding, and he gets a cloudy glimpse of Candi-with-an-i’s trademark cheekbones before she vanishes. Sam must have got her with the salt. Then Sam’s face is peering down at him worriedly through the sparkly swirls in Dean’s vision.

“God, Dean, are you OK? Fucking moron, I told you not to play with the fucking shoes,” he says, lifting Dean’s head, probably to see if his brains have spilled out all over the floor, and pressing his fingers round the back of his skull. Dean is too busy not throwing up to point out that Sam hadn’t even mentioned not playing with the shoes. He’d been all about respecting religious figures, which is pretty rich coming from someone who’s been dicked around with by angels as much as Sam, but as far as Dean knows deep sea diving boots are not, like, sacred objects.

“She’ll be back,” he says instead, because it’s Sam who seems to be getting sidetracked from business right now. “You should find the stupid shoe and burn it so we can get out of here.”

“Right,” says Sam. He puts Dean’s gun in his hand and curls his fingers around it. “You up to firing off the rock salt if she shows again?”

“Yeah,” says Dean, though he has no intention of sitting up or anything in the near future. “Just get the damn boots off me first.”

Sam yanks the diving boots off Dean’s feet with another muttered, “Moron,” jams his shoes on in their place, and goes back to tearing the tops off of shoeboxes at double speed, darting anxious glances now and then at Dean. Dean tries to look relaxed and alert.

It’s possible he’s doing better at the relaxed part than the alert bit, though, cause he maybe blanks on a few seconds and then Sam is saying, “Got it,” just as there’s a dazzle of fucking rhinestones and a spiky heel that looks, like, eight inches high is driving straight for Dean’s head. He manages to roll and fire the gun and yell, “Burn the goddamn shoe!” at Sammy all at once, while pain skates across his temple and rebounds crashingly from the back of his skull. He winds up with his back against a drawer. He tries to lift the gun, tries to see if Candi is coming round to stomp on him again, but there’s something dripping in his eye. Then Sam is pawing at him, pulling him to his feet. There’s a klaxon, louder than the ringing in Dean’s skull, and a truly awful smell.

“You stink,” he tells Sam.

“Burning synthetic lizard skin stinks,” says Sam. “Or maybe it’s the rhinestones. Come on. The fire alarm’s gone off and you’re bleeding.”

Dean doesn’t know exactly how they get to the car, but he’s pretty sure it involves Sam bundling him out a window like a sack of laundry or something. You’d think Sam would be more considerate when Dean has a headache. Next thing he’s clear on he’s in the passenger seat of the Impala and Sam is pressing a shirt to his head. It hurts. Oh, yeah. Sam said something about Dean bleeding, didn’t he? Dean’s bleeding because he got attacked by a shoe. It was probably Sam’s fault somehow.

“That better be your shirt,” he says accusingly.

Sam ignores this perfectly valid issue – it probably is, though, because Sam’s in a t-shirt and it’s not that warm – in favor of peering into Dean’s eyes with the flashlight from the glove compartment and making Dean count how many fingers he’s holding up.

“Three,” says Dean, “You know, finger-counting is a fun hobby and all, but we should maybe get out of here some time this week. Before the shoe cops show up.”

“You sure you’re good till we get to the motel room?” Sam asks. “I’m fine,” says Dean, so Sam will stop fussing. Sam finally ties the shirt around Dean’s head in a sort of turban and starts the car.

Dean’s not fine, though. He’s sick and dizzy and wronged. Sam is driving too fast, too, so all the streetlights stretch into long streaks, like when the Enterprise is at Warp 10. Dean should totally tell Sam that the engines canna take it. It’s funny because it’s true. Sam doesn’t know how to handle cars. But Dean’s not feeling up to setting Sam straight about engines right now. Some other time, maybe, when he hasn’t just been scalped. And why didn’t the fucking ghost scalp Sam, anyway? He was the one about to burn her goddamned designer murder weapon. Dean peers at his brother through a reddish haze of blood and resentment as Sam takes a corner like he’s Keanu Reeves in a car chase. It’s probably because Dean’s the good-looking one. No one could mistake Sam for a model. Especially not when he’s making that sour, worried face and prying people out of their warm car seats like he’s the fucking jaws of life, those things are fugly.

Huh. They must be at the motel.

“I’ve been scalped,” Dean informs Sam as he’s being manhandled towards the door of their room.

Sam looks guilty and anxious. He should. “Almost there, Dean,” he says. “We’ll get you fixed up.”

“What’s with the we?” says Dean crossly, “It’s your fault, you fix it. It’s because you’re not pretty,” he adds, and almost faceplants as Sam gets the door open.

“Wait here a sec,” says Sam, depositing Dean on one of the beds and pinning him there with a look, like Dean is going to get up and go somewhere, visit a museum, perhaps, because that’s so fucking educational. Sam vanishes into the bathroom. The room is undulating faintly all around Dean, like an octopus’s garden or something, and the pattern of the wallpaper blurs and shifts woozily when he looks at it. He closes his eyes, still feels the flash of pain when Sam comes back and turns on the glaring light over the bed.

“Sorry,” says Sam, “Need to see what I’m doing here.” Something wet swipes around Dean’s forehead, and then Sam’s fingers are probing around the cut on Dean’s temple and feeling up the goose egg on the back of his skull. “The cut needs stitches,” Sam says, “She kind of did a number on you, dude.”

“Don’t know how she could even walk in those things, let alone prance around murdering people,” Dean mutters.

Sam won’t give Dean any pills beyond Tylenol in case he has a concussion, and he won’t offer him whisky these days, like, ever, but he numbs the cut with ice before he starts to work. The needle is shiny silver to start with, but after the first tug and bee sting of pain it’s smeared with translucent red. Dean goes cross-eyed, following it as it appears and disappears with its trail of black thread, watching the complicated shape of Sam’s hand, quick and sure, and the way his face stays put, steady and intent, when the rest of the world does its wavy twirly thing.

“There,” says Sam finally, “Sorry.” He cuts the thread, dabs at the stitches with a cotton swab soaked in the stinging ochre of hydrogen peroxide, then grabs a kleenex from the box and blots the couple of involuntary tears that squeeze out of Dean’s eyes at the fresh fizz of pain.

“Sorry,” Sam says again. “Damn it. This was a hunt about shoes. The lighter side of ghost-busting. You weren’t supposed to get hurt.” He gathers up the detritus of thread and bloodstained cotton with jerky motions. “I’ll get a fresh ice pack,” he adds. He turns off the light over the bed and trudges off towards the bathroom, trailing clouds of irrational guilt. Dean can actually see them, like streamers of smoke. Great. One of Sam’s campaigns has suffered a setback, now Dean gets the inevitable aftermath.

Sam’s been running three campaigns, by Dean’s count, since Cas’s war ended and they’ve been back to the old saving people, hunting things routine. He suffers from delusions of subtlety, so he thinks Dean hasn’t noticed. But Dean’s smarter than Sam thinks he is, even now, when he’s just been scalped and is not at his best. Since Sam still needs building up after the soulless business -- what, Dean can’t have campaigns, too? Shut up -- Dean hasn’t pointed out yet how very mistaken he is on the subtle thing.

Anyway, there’s the campaign to get Dean to stay in touch with Lisa and Ben, the campaign to get Dean to date, and the campaign to make Dean rediscover the joy of hunting. Dean goes along with the first because, everything else aside, he _likes_ Lisa and Ben. If family friend is a role he can have, he wants it. He goes along with the second because some of the women are hot. And he goes with the third because he gets better gigs and a happier Sam than if Sam’s on his atone for ALL THE THINGS kick when he picks cases. And some of the fun cases are actually fun. But then cases backfire and go south, Dean gets scalped or something, and Sam’s systems crash and restart in atonement mode.

It’s probably on Dean this time. He shouldn’t have let slip to Sam that this particular fiasco was all his fault for not being pretty. Sam’s face isn’t so bad, anyway. Funny looking, of course, it always has been, but not bad. He just needs to do something about the hair.

Sam comes back into view, complete with hair, carrying the wastebasket and the new ice pack and trailed by his dark cloud. He puts the wastebasket down by the bed and perches cautiously beside Dean, settling the ice pack over the stitches, his hand spanning Dean’s head. His thumb strokes briefly over the hair behind Dean’s ear. Dean is totally summoning the energy to protest that, but right now it’s too foggy. If he lies very still the pain will stay where it is, tickling at the surface, won’t go spiking into his skull.

“You need a haircut, is all,” he tells Sam. There. That should fix it. At least it should hold him till morning. Dean lets his eyes shut.

“No falling asleep,” says Sam, and his hand grips tighter. Dean bats at it.

“It’s not my fault you’re boring,” he says.

“Fuck you,” says Sam, without heat. He’s doing the thumb-stroking thing again. “I figured out what was holding Candi, by the way.”

“What candy?” says Dean. The cold from the ice pack is seeping through to his brain, numbing his thoughts. He’s cut off from pills and whisky, but maybe Sam has some M&Ms stashed in the first aid kit.

“The ghost,” says Sam sharply, “Hey, you with me, Dean? Open your eyes. You remember the ghost?”

Dean squints his eyes open again. Sam is there, all loomy and frowny.

“Of course I remember the ghost,” Dean says. He totally does. “Hard to forget someone perforating your skull with a shoe. I’d just forgotten her name was Candi with a fucking i.”

Sam looks skeptical. “So what was holding her?” Dean asks, trying to head Sam off from launching into a current events quiz to assess Dean’s mental status and trivia skills.

Sam takes the bait. “There was blood in her shoe,” he says, “Her own blood, inside the heel. I saw it when I burned it. Doomed to eternal unrest by a blister.”

“Huh,” says Dean, “If Dr. Scholls would do his damn job we wouldn’t have to.”

Sam snorts in agreement, settles back against the headboard. “I was thinking,” he says, “We should stay a few days, let what’s left of your brains settle. We could do some stuff, when you’re up and about again. Take a break, look around the city.”

Plan B in Sam’s top secret get Dean to enjoy life agenda. Sam’s nothing if not persistent. But, actually . . .

“Wouldn’t mind going back to the shoe museum to see the space boots,” Dean confesses in a mumbled rush. After all, he’s wounded right now. Sam can’t make fun of him for liking the shoe museum without looking bad.

Of course, Sam has to come up with some other problem. Dean trusts him with a shameful secret, and Sam gets hung up on security considerations.

“That might not be such a great idea, Dean,” he says, “We did set off the alarm. Your blood is all over the floor in their storage room, and you’ve got stitches across your forehead, I’m not sure . . .” Then he looks down at Dean and his face _softens_ , the fucker, like Dean’s his kid, not his awesome older brother. “Oh, why not,” he says, “You can wear a baseball cap, it’s not like they’ll be taking DNA samples. We can go Saturday, when it’s crowded.” For a moment Dean’s afraid that he’s going to say “. . . promise,” and that will be it, he’ll have to kill his brother. But instead Sam adds, “ . . . Imelda,” and grins.

“You’ll be laughing out the other side of your face when I bludgeon you with a boot. A manly work boot,” Dean specifies darkly.

“Yeah, yeah,” says Sam. He sets the ice pack aside on the table, and rests his hand lightly over Dean’s eyes, shutting out the glow from the bathroom and the constant sweep and stab of headlights through the blinds. “Save it for morning.” And Dean figures Sam’s right, like he sometimes is. The bludgeoning can wait.

“It won’t be in the morning,” he says, so Sam doesn’t get complacent. “It will come when you least expect it. Like the ninja Inquisition.”

He’s drifting off, then, and Sam’s letting him. Sam will be there through the night, though, Dean knows. He’s reliable like that, like the atomic clock or something, every fucking hour on the anal dot, stupid hair and unfun hunts and cloud of guilt and all.

“G’night,” he mumbles to the warm darkness under Sam’s hand.


End file.
